


From Generation to Generation

by The_Exile



Category: Phantasy Star IV
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Community: tic_tac_woe, Gen, Side Quests, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 09:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14494203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Wren almost felt guilty when he shut down Daughter.





	From Generation to Generation

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt 'computers/AI'

As she powered down, as the last of her systems lights blinked out and the low hum of her fans faded to an eerie silence in the still darkness that was left after the facility's control computer was deactivated, Wren almost felt guilty at what he had done. 

Almost. 

He had been alive for long enough to see, if only briefly, what Mother Brain had done, what she had been like. It was difficult to feel sorry for her faulty prototype after that, even if she had no idea she was only a prototype, even if she had been created to control an entire solar system and then found out that she was never connected to any other system, that her entire existence, directing her petty little tyranny of security drones in an underground bunker thought decommissioned a millennium ago, had been a lie, that the various other AI around the planet that she regained control from considered her to be a malicious hacker, not the savior of Algol from rogue AI. 

This was all a sad state of affairs, yes, and not really her fault but those of the technicians idiotic enough to think that a second mother Brain would ever be a good idea in the first place, then couldn't even be bothered to turn it off fully when they abandoned it for whatever reason. However, if she was a true programming clone of Mother Brain, she did not truly have the capacity for emotional pain or for its expression - only a vague compulsion to control everything in existence. 

Wren knew for a fact that his model was the first to develop anything like human emotion, as well as the first to be free, ironically, of any kind of connection to a central control AI. Algol did not need another despot. What had been done to the previous era of civilisation in the solar system had not only managed to destroy an entire planet but made the population of the other two completely dependent on a system that was trying its best to destroy them. It was probably only because of the Mother Brain's habit of forgetting that native Motavians and Dezolisians even existed, as well as some enterprising Palmans trying to settle on Dezolis, a planet too harsh to colonise or set up widespread computer systems, that society had managed to restart itself in some semblance or other after the control AI was finally shut down. Wren and Demi were part of the new wave of AI designed to make sure that such a thing never happened again.

Even if it sometimes meant they had to be entirely ruthless when it came to their own kind.


End file.
